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Chickens, a LA Florentine

A dish of chicken halves cooked with ham or bacon, onions, carrots, mushrooms, garlic, parsley, green onions, and glazed with Malaga wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Chickens, a LA Florentine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Season the chicken halves with mignonette pepper and salt.

Cook

  1. In a deep sauté pan, heat the salad oil and add the garlic, parsley, and green onions.

  2. Add the parboiled ham or bacon, button onions, carrots, and mushrooms to the pan.

  3. Cook over moderate heat until the chicken pieces are lightly colored.

  4. Pour off the grease, then add the Malaga wine and glaze.

  5. Simmer over brisk heat until the liquid reduces to a glaze.

  6. Toss the chicken pieces in the glaze to coat them.

Serve

  1. Dish up the entrée, arranging the mushrooms and other vegetables around the dish.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Garlic + olivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Spring chickens
Provide the main protein, cooked until lightly colored and then coated in the glaze.
Ham or bacon
Adds savory, salty fat that flavors the pan and the glaze.
Malaga wine
Deglazes the pan and, reduced with the glaze, adds sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture that releases into the pan and mingles with the glaze.

The step that matters

Simmer until the liquid reduces to a glaze. Reducing over brisk heat concentrates the wine and pan juices into a syrupy coating. If it is stopped too early the sauce stays thin and runny, and if it goes too long it can scorch and turn bitter.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, garlic, parsley, onion, ham, carrot, olive):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, garlic, parsley, onion, ham, carrot, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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